Simon Fraser men's soccer coach Clint Schneider looks hopefully to the future, but hasn't lost sight of the lessons his team has learned over the challenging times of the COVID-19 pandemic and a cancelled GNAC season. (Photo by Paul Yates property of Simon Fraser athletics 2021. All Rights Reserved)
Feature University Men's Soccer

“I have hope” says coach Clint Schneider: Each socially-distanced step an important part of Simon Fraser soccer’s journey to a hopeful 2021 season!

BURNABY — Will B.C. university sports in 2020-21 go down in history as the lost season?Or will the passing of time perhaps confirm a radically different conclusion, more akin to the season which taught all concerned a level of lessons more impactful than any could have imagined?Spend a few moments chatting with Simon Fraser University […]

Chris Kennedy, a 1991 McNair Secondary grad, has coached basketball in B.C. since the 1987-88 season. The Superintendent of Schools for West Vancouver most recently guided Richmond's R.A. McMath Wildcats senior girls team. (Photo by Howard Tsumura property of VarsityLetters.ca 2020. All Rights Reserved)
Feature High School Boys Basketball High School Girls Basketball

VL Podcast 01.13.21: Author, author! Chris Kennedy takes his ‘Culture of Yes’ into its second decade with a message more relevant than ever

LANGLEY — Happy New Year. Our first podcast of 2021 features Chris Kennedy, Superintendent of Schools for West Vancouver, and a lifelong B.C. high school basketball coach. Kennedy’s popular blog Culture of Yes is now in its 11th year, and today the Richmond native stops by to engage our provincial audience with everything that the […]

Sands Scorpions head coach Matt McKay (crouching) isn't able to coach up his teamm during timeout this season, but the North Delta-based bench boss is hosting a series of online basketball clinics featuring coaches from all over North America. (Photo by Paul Yates property of Vancouver Sports Pictures 2021. All Rights Reserved)
Feature High School Boys Basketball University Men's Basketball

It’s a continental hoops cuisine! Matt McKay’s virtual Sands Basketball Clinics unite B.C. & North American coaches in the name of the game!

NORTH DELTA — They say that silence is deafening, and in perhaps the cruelest of ways, that was the auditory state most common among both high school basketball players and their coaches as each began 2021 by walking into gymnasiums normally teeming with the activity of a season in progress.“We all realized that last Wednesday […]

Steveston-London grad Fardaws Aimaq is a rebounding machine with a firm grip on his basketball future just seven games into his sophomore season with the Utah Valley Wolverines. (Photo by Jay Drowns property of Utah Valley University Marketing 2020. All Rights Reserved)
Feature University Men's Basketball

Fardaws Aimaq: From Steveston-London to the top of the NCAA D-1 rebounding charts at Utah Valley…is the NBA next for B.C.’s rising 6-foot-11 star?

Look up… look way up!Okay B.C. basketball fans, do you see that name right at the very tip-top of the list of the leading rebounders this season for all of NCAA Div. 1 men’s basketball?In case you were wondering just where the winding basketball roads had taken Fardaws Aimaq ever since the 6-foot-11 centre took […]

In February of 1952, Bill Russell (right, pictured in his USF days) came to B.C. with a touring California high school all-star team, playing teams like B.C. champion Duke of Connaught. Vancouver's John Oliver Secondary gym played host to one of the games. (Photo graphic by Gabriel Lynn property of VarsityLetters.ca 2020. All Rights Reserved)
Feature High School Boys Basketball University Men's Basketball

A SUNDAY READ: It’s no fable! In 1952, before his 11 NBA championship rings, a 17-year-old Bill Russell toured B.C. high schools and discovered his hoops identity!

Malcolm Reid had heard the story many, many basketball moons ago.Last week, the head coach of the Vernon Panthers’ senior boys basketball team recounted it to me, and just like the day he first heard it from a man named Dick Abbott, it almost sounded like a fable.Earlier this month, Abbott — the father-in-law of […]

The pandemic may have scrubbed the 2020 B.C. senior girls volleyball season, but nothing can stop the Varsity Letters annual B.C. Super 15 poll. Among this season's top players are (left to right) Kelowna Owls' Anya Pemberton and Madison Shanks, Sydney Wright of Surrey's Lord Tweedsmuir Panthers, Madison Gardner of Vernon's W.L. Seaton Sonics and Eva Person of Victoria's Stelly's Stingers. (Photo by Paul Yates property of Vancouver Sports Pictures 2020. All Rights Reserved)
Feature High School Girls Volleyball

Our 12th annual edition: Who are B.C.’s Top 15 Grade 12 girls volleyball players? Check out our 2020-21 Dream Team!

LANGLEY — Way back in December of 2009, when UBC Thunderbirds’ head coach Doug Reimer floated an idea past me to honour the best girls and boys high school volleyball players in B.C. on an annual basis, little did either of us know that a dozen years later, the concept would be as fresh today […]

Emoni Bush of Campbell River's Carihi Tyees is Varsity Letters' 2020-21 B.C. senior girls volleyball Player of the Year. Bush will next season head to Seattle and join the Pac 12's Washington Huskies. (Photos by Paul Yates and Jon Hayduk property of Vancouver Sports Pictures 2020. All Rights Reserved)
Feature High School Girls Volleyball University Women's Volleyball

There’s a name for that dream! Carihi Tyees’ Emoni Bush, B.C. Girls Volleyball 2020-21 Player of the Year, takes her golden spike to Pac 12’s UW Huskies!

Ask Emoni Bush to trace the origins of her unique given name, and the senior volleyball standout with Campbell River’s Carihi Tyees delivers her answer with an appropriate hint of joyous wonder.“What I’ve heard is that it came to my dad in a dream,” says Bush.Trace the journey she has made in the sport over […]

MEI's Hunter Arulpragasam was the fastest rising talent in B.C. boys high school volleyball. Check out where the Eagles' senior finished in our annual coaches poll of the province's best boys senior talent. (Photos by Paul Yates and Jon Hayduk property of Vancouver Sports Pictures 2020. All Rights Reserved)
Feature High School Boys Volleyball

Our 12th annual edition: Who are B.C.’s Top 15 Grade 12 boys volleyball players? Check out our 2020-21 Dream Team!

It’s Year No. 12 for the Varsity Letters’ B.C. boys Super 15 senior boys volleyball player rankings.Once again, our sincere thanks go out to the head coaches of four B.C. men’s Canada West volleyball programs who cast their votes from a pool of this province’s top graduating Grade 12 talent.COVID-19’s appearance on the scene could […]

The skywalker from Vernon! Liam Remple of the Vernon Christian Royals is a leaper with a very high ceiling. The unanimous choice as Varsity Letters 2020-21 B.C. Boys Volleyball Player of the Year is headed to Trinity Western next season. (Photo by Howard Tsumura property of VarsityLetters.ca 2020. All Rights Reserved)
Feature High School Boys Volleyball University Men's Volleyball

He makes time stand still! Vernon Christian’s Liam Remple, B.C. boys volleyball 2020-21 Player of the Year, brings gift of flight to TWU Spartans

Liam Remple has inhaled the rare air of his sport enough times to have gained a critical appreciation of how sweet the view can be almost 12 feet off the ground.“It’s pretty crazy up there, I’m not going to lie” laughed Remple, the high-flying 6-foot-7 Vernon Christian volleyball star during a phone interview earlier this […]

High-flying Ron Putzi dunks during the Richmond Colts' 1988 title win over Seaquam at the PNE Agrodome. (Photo property of BCHSBBOA 2020. All Rights Reserved)
Feature Podcast

VL Podcast 12.17.20 edition: Richmond Colts’ Ron Putzi on milking cows and making buckets over an extraordinary hoops life!

RICHMOND — He was the leading man on a high school basketball dynasty which ushered in a new era of mainstream popularity for B.C. boys high school basketball. Former Richmond Colts star Ron Putzi stops by to join host Howard Tsumura on this week’s Varsity Letters’ podcast. Tsumura covered Putzi’s high school exploits just as […]